Nebraska

What is the cost of government and what should it be? • Nebraska Examiner

Published

1 year ago

August 7, 2024

What is the cost of government and what should it be? • Nebraska Examiner

Tax policy is not a thrilling topic at the barbecue, but the taxes we pay are perennial subjects of conversation in Nebraska. As recipients of the property tax, we (counties, municipalities and schools) are as sensitive as anyone to the issue.

With a special session called explicitly for property taxes, we offer our perspective on how to approach them. We do not claim that doing any one thing in particular will “fix” property taxes, but we can offer general guidelines to inform policy discussions. Determining a proper tax structure boils down to how we collectively answer four basic questions:

What does government need to pay for?
How much is needed?
Who do we want to pay for it?
How do you want them to pay?

Years ago, these questions were answered in a way that led to our current tax structure. They are worth revisiting now.

What does government need to pay for?

Let’s first distinguish between “needs” and “wants,” which is difficult. Gov. Jim Pillen has suggested that not everything government pays for is a need, and we applaud his effort to “clean out the closets” by removing various state unfunded mandates on local governments.

Political subdivisions are creatures of the state. Their “needs” are largely determined by state statutes. The Legislature has assigned to counties the duties of roads, bridges, law enforcement, jails, courts, elections, and the collection of certain taxes and fees. Municipalities are responsible for community and economic development; providing public safety, including law enforcement, fire protection and EMS; public transportation infrastructure such as streets, roads and bridges; safe drinking water; wastewater treatment; solid waste management; libraries, parks and recreation centers; and other quality of life services. The schools have the duty to provide free instruction for children between the ages of 5 and 21 in the common schools of our state. This requires teachers, para-educators, bus drivers, coaches, administrators, janitors and other workers.

How much is needed?

Counties, municipalities and schools have an annual public budgeting process. Counties are required to publish one- and six-year plans on what the highway superintendent will do with roads and bridges. Law enforcement needs are mandated by state statute and oversight agencies such as the Crime Commission. The jails are given basic requirements by the state. Elections are overseen by the secretary of state.

Schools have numerous mandates from the state government, federal government and courts. These rarely come with the necessary funding.

Municipalities also face increasing costs and budgetary challenges due to unfunded mandates imposed by state and federal laws, regulations and court decisions, ranging from additional training requirements to preparation of reports and documents to be filed with the state or federal government.

A crucial point is that the cost of government has risen independent of CPI. Goods government pays for – gravel, asphalt, law enforcement vehicles and equipment, road graders, etc. – are not purchased at Walmart or off Amazon. Governments seek bids from a limited pool of vendors, and individual municipalities, counties and school districts do not always have the purchasing power to drive prices down.

Who do we want to pay?

As a state, we have determined local taxpayers should pay for items of a local nature. Traditionally, those have been considered (for counties): roads, bridges, law enforcement, jails, courts, tax collection and elections. For schools, it has been classroom teachers and facilities. For cities and villages, local taxpayers pay for municipal employees’ salaries; municipal facilities and equipment relating to law enforcement, fire protection, streets and roads; safe and plentiful drinking water; wastewater treatment; solid waste management; libraries; and parks and recreation centers.

These all have a mix of local and statewide impact. Roads and bridges, for instance, are critical segments of our state’s network of highways and byways. Law enforcement, courts, and the jails are all geared toward the prosecution and defense of state laws. Elections are for local, statewide and federal races.

High-quality public education gives every child the skills needed to compete and thrive in the 21^st century.

How do we want them to pay?

The three main sources of revenue are property, income and sales taxes. Income taxes should relate to a citizen’s ability to pay but can fluctuate from one year to the next. Areas with less income would be unable to pay for basic needs.

Sales taxes relate to a person’s willingness to pay, which is a measure of the ability to pay, but also trap more sparsely populated areas in a loop of increasingly diminished infrastructure. Property taxes are generally stable and relate to the value of real property, but not necessarily to an owner’s ability to pay.

Nebraska has consistently chosen property tax as a major funding source for local governments due to its stability. However, we are not limited to just the property tax. Other states have adopted a tax structure which diverts sales and income taxes to the communities in which they were raised.

That said, we have experienced that when the state experiences economic downturns, state aid to local government can and will be sharply reduced or eliminated. If this were pursued, we advocate for placing local funding guarantees in the Constitution.

Conclusion

We do not advocate for any particular position or policy regarding how taxes should be governed. Instead, we advocate for a thoughtful approach to what government should be responsible for. Then it is the obligation of the Legislature to determine how to raise the revenues necessary to have government perform its assigned duties. In fact, raising “the necessary revenues of the state and its political subdivisions” has been in our Constitution for over 100 years.

Schools, counties, and municipalities are the primary recipients of the property tax, and these taxes are spent on the basic infrastructure and essential services to Nebraskans that allow our communities to grow. Our organizations support taking pressure off property owners with additional state property tax relief, so long as our communities and services to citizens aren’t negatively impacted.

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Nebraska

Husker Fans flock to NCAA Volleyball final four despite no Nebraska

Published

11 hours ago

December 19, 2025

Press Room

Husker Fans flock to NCAA Volleyball final four despite no Nebraska

LINCOLN, Neb. (KOLN) – With 2025 NCAA Volleyball Championships in Kansas City this season, many Nebraska fans made plans ahead time given the driving distance to Lincoln. The Huskers lost in the regional final at home yet many fans still attended the final four.

“We just want to watch high-quality volleyball, grow the sport, and it’s a competitive sport, and there’s still four very good teams here,” Elizabeth Wright, a life-long Nebraska Volleyball fan, said.

Hundreds of Husker faithful dawned their red Nebraska gear as they entered the T Mobile Center on Thursday night with their team not playing. When asked about which team Nebraska fans would support, the majority of interviewees said Texas A&M.

“Part of me wants to watch Texas A&M win just because they beat us, and if they win, it gives us a little validation that we lost to the best team,” Karla Huneke, a Grand Island native and Nebraska Volleyball fan, said.

Overall, the surprise of Nebraska not making the NCAA Volleyball Championship didn’t impact Nebraskans from attending the final four.

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Nebraska

Nebraska State Patrol investigating after body found in farm outbuilding

Published

23 hours ago

December 18, 2025

Press Room

Nebraska State Patrol investigating after body found in farm outbuilding

LINCOLN, Neb. (KLKN) – The Nebraska State Patrol is investigating after a body was found on a farm in rural Furnas County on Wednesday.

The patrol said the body was found in an outbuilding on a rural farm north of Oxford.

A representative of the farm’s owners was inspecting the property ahead of a sale and found the body in the outbuilding, according to the patrol.

Investigators documented the scene and are working to identify the body.

The patrol said it was “apparent” the person had been dead for “some time.” There is no believed to be no threat to the public.

An investigation is ongoing, and an autopsy is scheduled for Friday.

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Nebraska

Nebraska CIO on Preparing for Future Talent, Tech Needs

Published

1 day ago

December 18, 2025

Press Room

Nebraska CIO on Preparing for Future Talent, Tech Needs

Nebraska officials have spent 2025 focused on laying the groundwork to advance IT talent pipelines, AI implementation and more in 2026 — and on reducing IT costs while doing so.

State CIO Matthew McCarville was tapped to lead Nebraska IT in 2024, in part with the goal of delivering cost savings to taxpayers. He views diversity, in a broad sense, as a mindset through which to find new technology solutions and talent.

Nebraska IT is in a position to modernize now, McCarville said, and that is in part a result of IT work in recent years. When he came to the state, systems were almost entirely on-premise mainframe. Since his arrival, work has begun to get the state off mainframe and into a cloud environment in the next calendar year; a vendor selection is expected in January. That will be key to state adoption of emerging technologies like AI.

“[The cloud environment] enables us to leverage all of that data in a new way we’ve never been able to before,” he said, explaining that using AI on an on-premise mainframe is “cost-prohibitive.” Now, state data can be used more effectively, enabling predictive analytics and AI in a cost-effective way.

The other piece of the AI puzzle is the skillset needed to implement it effectively. In Nebraska, roughly one-third of full-time employees qualified for retirement about a decade ago, according to McCarville, so the talent question is a high priority.

The state has a Data and AI Center of Excellence in Omaha, which enables officials to launch an internship initiative as an early talent pipeline for people who may not have worked with state government. The internship is expected to launch “full-bore” in January, and the first-ever statewide IT apprenticeship program is expected to arrive in 2026.

The apprenticeship program is GI Bill-qualified, so its funding will support the state’s collaboration with educational entities to train exiting military members — and the broader public — on AI, data and cybersecurity. The program is also intended to encourage people to stay in Nebraska.

These initiatives, McCarville said, aim to help the state address modernization needs while dealing with a soon-to-retire workforce, cost-effectively.

Part of modernization is implementing a mindset shift to one that is more forward-looking, he said. For example, rather than remaining entrenched in vendor agreements created 20 years ago, state IT is diversifying its ecosystem and moving away from such long-term relationships.

Diversifying vendors does require knowledge about more products, but it better positions the state to tackle new projects by being able to work with the lowest-cost provider. This shift is not a critique of previous vendors, McCarville said, but reflects meeting modern needs.

The state launched its first Joint Security Operations Center in 2024, powering a whole-of-state model through which state IT officials serve all 93 counties and their cities, plus more than 250 K-12 supporting organizations, governor’s cabinet agencies, and non-cabinet boards, agencies and commissions.

“So, we are building a kind of ‘Field of Dreams’ for cyber,” said McCarville of the state’s approach — creating the infrastructure in an effort to attract organizations to participate.

There has been much discussion of potential changes at the federal level that could affect state cybersecurity funding, but McCarville said state cybersecurity must rely on sustainable funding sources — and federal funding is not always that. He said he views federal funding as an “added bonus” for state cybersecurity.

Although the state is investing in IT, doing so in a cost-efficient way is a priority to address budget constraints. The state Legislature is facing a $471 million deficit in the annual budget, and the governor has established a goal for cabinet agencies to cut $500 million a year over the next two years.

The Nebraska Office of the CIO (OCIO) is in a unique position because rather than receiving a general fund appropriation, agencies pay for its services from general funds they receive. Still, OCIO is reducing its rates and expenses to offer them discounts — cutting $2.5 million in annual recurring overhead so far, with the goal of reaching $13 million. This was not mandated, but is OCIO’s way of helping the state address the deficit.

“Cutting dollars in IT doesn’t always end up having an added benefit,” McCarville said. “But we are trying very hard in modernization, which typically costs more money, to lower our expenses — but yet modernize and do all of these initiatives at the same time.”

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